Celebrity Big Brother may have its unedifying moments but it remains utterly
captivating, says Rupert Hawksley

It isn’t easy to defend Celebrity Big Brother. The problem with enjoying a show this outwardly puerile and vacuous is that when people – and believe me, there is no shortage of willing candidates – explain to you just how puerile and vacuous it is, you can but nod in agreement. Quite how they know so much about a programme they wouldn't dream of watching remains a mystery, of course.

The hitch for the critics, however, is that the show remains popular. Now in its 13th series, Celebrity Big Brother continues to draw impressive audience figures – an average of 2.3 million a night this series – and generate salacious newsprint. This year has been no exception.

There has been nudity, a sex party and a seemingly endless supply of alcohol, leading to an unhealthy dollop of bad behaviour. Boy band member Lee Ryan declared his love for glamour model Casey Batchelor but has since been spending an awful lot of time doing God-knows-what in the bathroom with the tap on, accompanied by Jasmine Waltz (you know, the one who “famously” punched Lindsay Lohan). Waltz last night became the second housemate to be evicted from the house. Elsewhere, vicious arguments have also flared up between a number of the housemates: N-Dubz singer Dappy and The Apprentice's Luisa Zissman have screamed at each other in a string of unedifying incidents, while Jim Davidson has upset, well, everybody with his cantankerous attitude, not to mention his jokes. The volatile atmosphere in the house was not helped by this week’s toe-curlingly uncomfortable face-to-face nominations.

Or at least those are the tabloid headlines and I would forgive you for finding all of them soporifically dull. Indeed, it is not the scandal that draws me to Celebrity Big Brother. Where this reality show excels, and where others like I’m A Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here! and Celebrity Love Island fall down, is its ability to tease out the true characteristics of all the contestants.

In ITV's I’m A Celebrity… the contestants can for the most part hide behind the action of the daily tasks and the bushtucker trials. On the same channel's now defunct Celebrity Love Island, set on an island in Fiji, the beautiful surroundings lent a relaxed, holiday feel to proceedings. It was easy for them to shine in this environment, as they padded along the beach to the waterside hammocks where cocktails awaited.

Conversely, the monotony of living within the same four walls, in glamorous Elstree no less, for weeks on end, never able to escape the camera’s glare, ensures that facades slip and reputations crumble on Celebrity Big Brother. Quite simply, you cannot play up to the camera in the repetitive normality of the house for such a prolonged and intense period of time.

Dappy entered the house and initially charmed his fellow housemates in an attempt to prove that he was likeable, and, in desperate need of a profile boost, marketable. Within days, however, he was struggling to keep up the act, aggressively berating Zissman over her sex life and revealing an unsavoury attitude to women. Zissman, not unreasonably, branded him a “sexist, chauvinistic bigot”. I imagined his agent slouched somewhere, head in hands, muttering grimly: “we talked about this Dappy, we talked about this.”

Similarly Evander Holyfield expressed his contempt for homosexuals in an indiscreet moment, while Daily Mail columnist Liz Jones continues to expose her vulnerability in a way not even a lifetime of deeply personal and highly controversial columns has done.

More positively, reality television stars Ollie Locke (Made in Chelsea)and Sam Faiers (The Only Way is Essex) – the two contestants you might have predicted to act most outrageously (normally a byword for tediously) – have behaved with a maturity and decorum rarely displayed on their respective television shows. Both of them will benefit from this experience. Our celebrity-obsessed world can be misleading but Celebrity Big Brother is consistent in exposing inaccuracies and false perceptions.

Despite the glitz of the opening night, the screaming eviction crowds and the paparazzi’s flashing bulbs, Celebrity Big Brother actually very cleverly undermines the celebrity myth. What we see is the true face of these people who are so often shielded by publicists, adoring fans and the false shimmer of gossip magazines.

Big Brother launched in Britain in 2000, more as a social experiment than anything else, and it remains the purest form of reality television, putting people under the microscope and analysing their every action. Humans are fascinated by their own species and while what we see isn’t always pretty, it’s never less than captivating. Big Brother, I'm watching you.